


And Five

by twobettafish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (To a given definition of "fun"), Alternate Timelines, Angst, But I'll try to make the ride fun, M/M, You know where this ends up so don't expect a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27494857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobettafish/pseuds/twobettafish
Summary: On attempt 14,000,604, Stephen Strange discovered the combination of events necessary to save the universe.He tried one more time.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 33
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

~~One.~~

~~Two.~~

~~Three.~~

.  
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.  
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~~Four-hundred ninety-two.~~

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~~Seven thousand fifty-eight.~~

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~~Eighty-nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-five.~~

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~~Three hundred thousand and nine.~~

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~~One million, four hundred thousand and eighteen.~~

.  
.  
.  
.  
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~~Three million and eight.~~

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~~Five million, nine hundred thousand, five hundred and seven.~~

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.  
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~~Eight million, four hundred thousand, and ninety-two.~~

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~~Eleven million, one hundred thousand, two hundred and eighty-four.~~

.  
.  
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~~Thirteen million, eight hundred thousand, seventy thousand and nineteen.~~

.  
.  
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.  
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Fourteen million, six hundred and four.

Fourteen million, six hundred and five. 


	2. Chapter 2

An energy blast toppled Bruce Banner, and agony exploded as he landed hard on his injured arm. He'd seldom felt real pain since merging with the Hulk, but today was different. The Infinity Stones they'd collected had coursed through his veins like the heat of a burning star and wrapped each vessel with the chill of deep space. That pain lasted.

He gritted his teeth and allowed himself only a quiet, choking noise. None of them could afford to show weakness. Not now. Not to these foes.

"Where is it?" someone shouted as Bruce pushed himself back up. "The van! It should be heading for the van!"

One of Thanos' minions caught Bruce as he stood, swinging a weapon toward his head hard enough to shatter a human skull. It did sting a little, but the weapon broke, and Bruce reached out with one meaty, green hand that could palm that alien's entire skull. He swung the three-hundred pound body like a baseball, and nodded in grim satisfaction as it impacted one of its allies.

Bruce hated this. He wasn't a fighter, never had been. But on a day like today, the Hulk's old, familiar bloodlust had its purpose.

"Where's the gauntlet?" someone screamed across his communicator, and this time, Bruce paid attention. It sounded like Sam—

 _(Sam was back, but soon,_ all _of them might be gone)_

—And it seemed like their already tenuous mission was failing. All they knew to do was to get that gauntlet across the field of battle, and then send the Infinity Stones back to their respective pasts. It sounded like even that had fallen apart. Sick with worry, Bruce stretched up as high as he could, not really expecting to see anything that Sam hadn't.

But he did.

Thankfully, the gauntlet was still in friendly hands. Near where they'd all started, Stephen Strange held it in deep contemplation. Abruptly, his gaze snapped up and studied whatever he saw in front of him. Confused, Bruce turned to see what Strange had looked at with such weighty consideration, but there was nothing. The stare was aimed toward an angle that covered him, Rhodey, Tony, Wong... no one remarkable, not when the level of icy determination he'd seen in Strange's eyes was more suited for Thanos himself approaching.

Well, either way, they had to get that gauntlet to the van. Bruce turned back toward Strange, about to offer help to clear a path toward the battlefield, but the words died in his throat. 

They were supposed to get that gauntlet across the field. Everyone knew that. Everyone knew it was their only shot to get through this alive... and yet, Strange was calmly lifting his right hand, as his left lowered the gauntlet onto it.

"No!" Bruce bellowed, and rushed forward as Strange doubled over in pain. Bruce's good arm extended uselessly, like he could somehow rip that gauntlet off, but even putting it on was a death sentence. The energy that had cascaded through the Hulk's empowered form would burn a human down like a candle wick, even before they tried to use it. And once they did...

"What—shit!" Tony shouted from behind him. Foot jets roared as he corrected course and joined the pointless rescue attempt. "This is a team play, Dumbledore! You're not supposed—"

Strange didn't hesitate. With a calm, certain stance despite the energy ripping through him, he lifted his right hand and snapped its fingers.

Centered on that hand, the universe shook. A shockwave of incredible force erupted, toppling Bruce and knocking Tony out of the sky. Jagged rocks pushed into Bruce's back; Tony rebounded off others. As Tony pushed himself up, groaning with obvious pain, both men became slowly aware that the world had grown very still.

They'd won. The fighting had stopped. Thanos' army was falling apart just as half the world had, five years ago: silently. Slowly. Inevitably. 

Tony's helmet slid open, and the same realization was in his eyes: they'd won. They'd really won. And he looked completely pissed off about it. "Show-off," he muttered, and wiped his hands across his face. "Damnit. We had a plan. No one needed to..."

"He didn't even try," Bruce sighed, and pushed himself to his feet. Strange had barely moved from where they'd begun. Couldn't he have tried portaling across the field, straight to the van? Couldn't he have tried... anything but sacrificing himself, just as the fight was getting started?

"You didn't need to do that," Tony murmured as they stared across the stony field to where Stephen Strange lay absolutely motionless, half-hidden by the rocks he'd collapsed behind. "You didn't." His head shook again, slowly. "Come on. Let's go."

"Yeah." Much of the mess with Thanos had started with the three of them. Bruce supposed that it made sense to end that way, too. With regret that nearly drove out his relief, Bruce walked forward to acknowledge the man who'd made the ultimate sacrifice to secure their sure victory... even if he didn't have to.

But, as soon as he rounded the rocks to get a clear view, Bruce stopped.

Tony stopped, too. His face warped with confusion. "Wait. What?"

"What?" Bruce hollowly echoed, and instinctively touched his burnt cinder of an arm. Someone especially powerful or skilled could handle one Infinity Stone, but no human could hope to hold all of them united. They could certainly never _use_ them; Bruce's now-destroyed limb showed what would happen to someone far sturdier than any human. For them, putting on the Gauntlet was a death sentence and using it was the final trigger.

Or so he'd thought, before seeing Strange sprawled unconscious on the ground, but alive and completely unmarked. His Gauntlet-clad hand was still held in the fingersnap that had saved the universe.

Disbelieving, Tony looked Bruce's mangled arm over, and then hurried over to kneel next to Strange and check him for the similar wounds that must be there. Somehow. Somewhere. But they weren't: Strange's breathing was deep and regular, and his skin was unharmed.

Bewildered, Tony sat back on his heels and looked at the impossible sight in front of him, then turned to study the army as it finished crumbling into dust. Too confused to be happy about their salvation, Tony turned back to Strange's still form and demanded, "What in the hell just happened?"


	3. Chapter 3

The Avengers' headquarters had held some of the most advanced labs in the world, perfect for examining the impossible. Unfortunately, that headquarters was now a smoking hole in the ground. Tony's labs at his quiet, remote house weren't up to this medical task, but Bruce's home was filled with the devices he'd used to measure his own body's changes over the years. It'd probably be good enough.

No one would call the disappearance of half the world's population a good thing, but it had given Bruce the chance to acquire a large, comfortable place in New Jersey. He'd been motivated by not wanting to squeeze his large body through a tight Manhattan apartment, and later realized that some of those spare rooms could be labs and server space. For him and Tony, all of this was like a playhouse.

"Lay him down," Tony directed Bruce as they walked into the medical lab. The bed there was sized for Smart Hulk in all his ceiling-tickling glory, and Strange looked small on top of it. "But do it carefully. I'm thinking that he must have turned himself into a ticking time bomb, or something."

"You really think so?" Bruce asked with a fair amount of concern, and did lift Strange off his shoulder quite carefully.

"I mean... something weird must have happened. Anyway, go start the scans. I'll watch him."

"You're gonna stand next to the time bomb?"

Whatever had just happened with this man and this gauntlet, it was impossible. And the impossible was always fascinating. "Yeah. I'll stay here and watch."

"All right," Bruce relented, and walked into the next room, which he'd turned into a control bank for all his complicated labs.

"We had this under control, you know," Tony lectured Strange, now that he could see his heartbeat on the monitors. It seemed steady. Impossibly steady. "But you just couldn't trust us, huh? Had to steal all the glory for yourself." Dust still covered Strange's face where he'd collapsed after using the gauntlet, and his back was thick with it where he'd landed. Between that and the five years-ago fight on Titan that he'd woken up from, he looked quite the mess... but of course, nowhere nearly as bad as he should have. He still had the angular, assured features as before, unblemished by Infinity energy, and somehow looked haughty even while unconscious.

Considering that the guy had saved them, it did seem wrong to let all that dust stay in place. Tony began to clean it away from his face with a medical wipe, careful not to disturb the time bomb. The lights flickered just as he finished, and he looked up with a concerned frown.

"Sorry!" Bruce called. "The scanners freaked out a little when they got to the gauntlet. I'll recalibrate."

In the renewed silence, Tony bent down to look at that gauntlet. It was covered with scorch marks, as was the singed sleeve edge next to it, but the skin of Strange's arm really was completely unmarked. Whatever had happened, it had treated human flesh as more durable than top-of-the-line Stark nanotech, and that was — to use a scientific term — highly fucking unlikely.

Blinking as he noticed something, Tony leaned in closer. It wasn't damage, but there _was_ at least one effect to Strange: instead of the gauntlet burning him, its edges had fused seamlessly with his skin. Huh. 

Struck by curiosity, Tony wrapped his hand around a few of Strange's fingers, careful to not touch the Stones, and tugged. There was no give at all, no sensation of it sliding around the hand inside. Instead, Strange's whole arm moved slightly forward like Tony had yanked on his own, flesh-and-blood hand. Hmm. "Note to self," Tony murmured as he sat back to better inspect the entire device. "Priority one is decoupling that nanotech material from where it's integrated with the skin."

"You're not kidding about that," came Bruce's voice over the speakers. After Tony looked up toward one, he continued, "As near as I can tell, yeah, the gauntlet has totally integrated itself."

Picturing what might be needed to pull it loose, Tony grimaced. "Are we talking skin graft territory?" That was a far better outcome than it could have been, but still: gross.

"You're not getting me, Tony. The gauntlet didn't integrate with his skin. It integrated with his _arm."_

Hesitating, Tony then headed for the control room.

Above all else, Bruce Banner was good with manipulating radiation. The 'x-ray' he'd used was far more advanced than what any hospital had, and it was able to generate a holographic mock-up of Strange's right arm as detailed as if it were one of the engineering models in Tony's workshop. Though he was never a fan of medical goop, Tony reached for that hologram and tried to pull it apart, expecting to see muscles and bones inside.

But there was no bone nor muscle, any more. Strange's entire right forearm had turned into a solid, intricate nanotech creation, more complicated than even what Tony's labs could fabricate. "Uh," Tony summarized as he picked apart piece after piece of that nanotech arm, and tried and failed to make sense of it. "Gut check: this shouldn't have happened, right?"

"No _idea_ how it happened," Bruce haltingly agreed. With a sigh, he gestured to his mangled arm. "Trust me: that's not how it usually goes with Infinity Stones."

"You got hurt," Tony mused. He cocked one hip to the side and stroked his beard in thought. "And from what people said after tracking him down, Thanos got hurt, too. But we're supposed to believe that Merlin over here just shrugged off something that nearly took _you two_ down?" His head slowly shook, and Tony folded his arms as he studied the impossible hologram. "There's no way."

"Well. There's at least some way," Bruce countered, and gestured toward the lab. "'Cause it happened."

Exhaling sharply, Tony nodded. Yeah. This was definitely the impossible, and the impossible was always fascinating, but when Stephen Strange got involved, the impossible was also annoying. "We need to ask him."

"If he ever wakes up."

Oh, wouldn't that just be like him? Create one of the greatest medical mysteries in the universe, and then lie there, stubbornly comatose, and refuse to tell them all of those fascinating, impossible details. "He'll wake up," Tony decided. He was going to solve this mystery, and so Strange had to wake up to help with that. "I'm gonna go get pizza. You want some?"

"Yeah," Bruce said, distracted as he analyzed his data. "Get me a large meat lover's and a large sausage and olive."

Tony hesitated, looked over Bruce's massive form, and shrugged. Two larges and a medium it was, then.

On the walk back from the pizzeria, Tony's watch flared with an incoming message. They'd checked on everyone's status before leaving the smoking pit of headquarters, but Tony only knew those rough basics before he and Bruce had taken off with what they'd thought was a potential emergency. "Hey, Tony," Steve said after Tony had successfully juggled the pizza boxes to answer him. "So, ah, what happened with...?"

"The glory hound? Still alive, somehow."

Steve didn't seem to appreciate that description of the man who'd saved them all, but let it slide. "Huh. How'd he pull that off?"

"No clue. We're going to try to wake him up to ask, but who knows about a timeline on that. He is _out."_

"We'll all be interested in hearing what went on, there. Anyway, we've got the Lang van working, and we're in contact with Hank Pym for those particles, so we've got our time machine ready to be fired up. We could drive the van down to Bruce's place, if you can be ready to bring the gauntlet out to it."

"Yeah, so, funny story: no."

"I... am not really seeing how 'no' is funny, here."

Pizza scent wafted to him, and Tony set back into motion on the sidewalk as his stomach rumbled. The world seemed incredibly noisy with so many people back. At least traffic hadn't slammed to an abrupt worse-than-rush-hour logjam; half the world's cars had long rusted out or gone dead. "I'm saying I can't bring you the gauntlet. It integrated with Strange's arm, somehow."

"Integrated?"

"Maybe 'replaced' is a better word. Everything below that elbow is solid nanotech, now. And no, before you ask: I don't know how or why."

"Huh." Steve needed a second to continue. "Well, that's obviously... unfortunate, but we'll need to take out the Stones anyway, to put them all back in the right times. Can you get them out now for return delivery?"

"I just grabbed pizza, but after that, sure." After the near-end of the world, a man had to have priorities. Pizza was always a priority.

"It'll be a bit of a drive down there, anyway. Enjoy the pizza."

Tony did, as did Bruce. Both men ate steadily through their respective boxes until they were pleasantly gorged on cheese, toppings, and deep, all-consuming relief. "Okay," Tony yawned. Boy. The near-apocalypse was exhausting. "Let's pop out those Pez from their dispenser."

But when Bruce grabbed carefully at the Mind Stone between two thick fingers, it did not want to pop out.

"My release commands aren't working," Tony grumbled as he tried and failed to force his gauntlet to expand its settings for the Stones enough to loosen them. Integrated with Strange's body like it was, the nanotech no longer seemed to treat Tony's controls as their ultimate authority. "Let me get some tongs."

"I'm supposed to use these tongs?" Bruce dubiously asked as Tony found and handed over a pair of standard medical tongs. "The Infinity Stones don't want to pop out, and so I'm supposed to _force_ them with some basic stainless steel tongs?"

"I could wrap 'em in more nanos, if you want. Like rubber insulation."

Bruce shot him a flat look in reply, but did arrange himself next to Strange's side. "I already messed up one arm, today," he sighed, and tried to hold the tongs as securely as he could in his left hand. "Why not the other?"

When he tried grabbing for the Mind Stone again with the tongs' small, precise grip, his only achievement was to lift Strange's arm along with the attempt. "Okay, I'm just gonna rip his arm off if I try any harder," Bruce grumbled. "Let me try this."

Soon, Tony's eyebrows raised as strips of vibranium extended from that side of the medical bed, locking down Strange's arm with a dozen inch-wide cuffs that ran from his wrist up to his shoulder. They tightened snugly around the man's arm like they'd been designed for it. "I had to do some experiments on myself," Bruce explained as he leaned back in. "These kept the Hulk from punching his way free if things went off-balance, brain-wise."

"How much did all that vibranium cost?" Tony wondered as Bruce considered his angle of attack. "You never asked me for my credit card."

Bruce shrugged, leaning in. "Wakanda remembered me trying to help out, over there." His grip slipped, and Bruce sighed and tried again. "These things really do not want to come out. At least I'm not getting shocked with a mental bolt or something."

Tony leaned over and knocked on a wooden counter.

Snorting, but not arguing against the superstition, Bruce leaned in for yet another attempt. "Okay, I think I found an edge I can apply some pressure on. I'm just trying not to break the guy's arm as I do, but..." With a deepening frown, Bruce quieted to work in slow, steady movements more suited for decorating a Fabergé egg than prying loose one of the most powerful items in creation.

So consumed by watching Bruce work, it took Tony a while to notice something in his peripheral vision. With each attempt that Bruce made to extract the Mind Stone from the gauntlet, Strange's eyelids were flickering. "Hold up," Tony said, and considered that. "Just tap it, instead."

"Tap it?" Bruce wondered, before also seeing Strange on the verge of waking. A soft noise of realization escaped him. "You in there?" he quietly asked, and tapped once, twice, three times on the golden stone.

On the third tap, Strange's eyelids flew open. He blinked several times, then looked around Bruce's lab with almost annoyed confusion. "Wait. Am I still alive?"

At the sharp question, Tony couldn't help but laugh. Strange sounded as coherent as ever, and as much of a jerk as before. "Yeah. Apparently. You mind telling us why you ruined everyone's plan?"

"Ugh. So, it didn't work against Thanos? And how did we get away?"

"No," Tony chuckled. The man was weirdly unflappable. Since they were on the other side of everything, that attitude could be entertaining. "It worked."

"It worked?" Strange slowly repeated, and his frown deepened. "But then I can't be alive. Not after using the gauntlet."

"We're still trying to figure that part out," Bruce admitted.

Since he obviously _was_ alive, Strange let that impossibility pass. "Hmm. Who died in the fight?"

"Just Thanos' people."

"Were there any additional casualties?"

"Take a breather, Captain," Tony snorted, though not even Steve Rogers would demand a mission debriefing quite this intensely. He opened his mouth to really offer an answer, only to remember the news that they'd all compartmentalized until after the worst was over. "No one else during the fight," Tony slowly continued. "Just... one before."

At those quiet words, a black cloud seemed to fill the room. Memories of inappropriate jokes, desperate fights, and countless other precious moments filled Tony's mind. Natasha. They were through the worst of it, now. The wound she'd left could be felt, again. Natasha.

"Five," Strange murmured to himself, and nodded slowly. "All right."

With an almost physical effort, Tony shoved aside his memories and mourning. It wouldn't do to let this near-stranger into that private moment. "Five what?"

Though Tony had expected Strange to brush him off as he'd done so often before, he was instead surprised to have the man's eyes meet his and hold that stare for a long, uncomfortable moment. Uneasy, Tony actually took a step back. An odd energy had just passed between them. If asked, he couldn't have put a name to it.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter. I'm getting closer, and—" Finally, Strange seemed to notice the vibranium cuffs binding his right arm, and shot a curious look at Bruce and Tony. With an apologetic jump to attention, Bruce released him. "Thanks, I..." Trailing off, Strange sat up and studied the nanotech gauntlet that had replaced his right hand and forearm. His fingers moved in a careful, deliberate sequence, making the Infinity Stones glint under the lab's lights, but each movement only deepened his frown. "I can't feel my hand at all."

"If there's any hidden nerve damage from the Stones," Bruce said dryly, and gestured to his own, mangled arm, "that might be a good thing."

"I can't feel my hand at all," Strange repeated, "but it still moved exactly like I wanted. Trust me: that's not how it works."

"Nothing about today is 'how it works,'" Tony pointed out. Despite himself, he couldn't help but be happy to be having this conversation. Yes, Strange was irritating, but they were on the same side and they'd both had each other's backs. An argument was far better than a funeral. "Look, you lucked out. Somehow."

"Somehow," Strange slowly agreed, and moved his nanotech fingers again. "Well. This is better than last time, at least."

"Last time?" Tony repeated, only to be intently studied again in a way that made him take another step back.

Strange swallowed, then shook his head. "Never mind. It's irrelevant, now. I'm getting very close. Five might be the minimum."

"Seriously, five what?" Tony wondered.

"Long story. Things seem to be working out for the best, and that's all that matters." Strange nodded slowly, and murmured to himself, "At the start of the fight, I let everyone else move away, and then use the gauntlet myself. Got it."

Tony and Bruce exchanged a curious look with each other. Bruce shrugged.

"Anyway," Tony interrupted as Strange kept whispering soft, thoughtful notes to himself, "they're driving down Lang's van to take all of those Stones back home. We couldn't pry them out, not without Bruce worrying about snapping your arm in half. Would you mind?"

"Yeah," Strange said, still distracted. "Sure."

Tony waited as Strange reached for the back of his right hand with his left, then waited some more. "Any Stone to start with," he eventually prompted. "We can take 'em back one-by-one, or all at once, or... y'know. Whatever works." Another ten seconds passed, and Tony couldn't help but ask, "So, can you get them out?"

Strange slowly studied the Infinity Gauntlet that had replaced his hand, studded with the most powerful objects in the universe. He'd been attempting to pry out the Space Stone, but it was in place as securely as the Mind Stone still was. "No. I don't think I can."

A respectful pause passed, to make sure he meant it. Clearing his throat, Bruce wondered, "So, ah... what now? If we need to get all of those Infinity Stones back to their home timelines? And... out of you?"

"I'm not sure, yet," Strange admitted, and tilted his nano arm back and forth to let the Stones catch the light. "This part is brand new."

'This part?' This man was very, very odd. Not that Tony was surprised by that, given the crazy outfit. "I'm gonna go call home," Tony sighed, and pushed himself toward the door. "This sounds like a late night ahead." 

A few steps from the door, Tony became aware of Strange again studying him with that same weighty stare. Unable to process its shrouded meaning, it skittered uselessly up and down his spine and left anxiety in its wake. Tony hurried his pace for those last few steps, and shut the door behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

"No, no, it's fine," Pepper promised Tony. "I know those things were incredibly dangerous. You need to handle the clean-up before you come home."

He smiled at her holographic face. "Thanks. I'd say we're ninety-nine percent done with all the bad stuff. And this one percent is just paperwork, basically. Shouldn't be long."

"Great. Just let me know when you're coming home." With a relieved sigh, Pepper smiled back at him. "Feels like we really lucked out."

"Seems so," Tony agreed, kissed his fingertips, and pressed them to her holographic lips before cutting the feed. "All right," he grumbled, and turned back to the door. "Let's go figure this out."

"Tony," Bruce pleaded as soon as he stepped back into the lab. "Tell him that this is a bad idea. Maybe he'll listen to you."

Oh, great. He was supposed to wrangle Stephen Strange? Highly unlikely. "He never listens to me," Tony snorted, and turned to see whatever Bruce was complaining about with their troublesome doctor. A yelp escaped him a second later, and he bolted forward to try to shake some sense back into the man.

In the gauntlet, the Power Stone shone like a violet star. Strange's forehead was lined with concentration as he stared at the Time Stone, exposed where he'd bent his thumb to make the knuckle protrude. "Will you come _out?"_ he snapped at it.

Just before Tony made contact with him, Strange noticed his approach and cut the feed. "Tony, be careful. I was using the Power Stone."

Disbelieving, Tony spread his hands. "And maybe: _don't?"_

"I'm completely used to manipulating the Time Stone, it's fine," Strange said shortly. "But you aren't, so stay clear when I'm using one of them." He saw the protest building and beat Tony to a reply. Sharp, pale eyes flashed with intensity. "I'm serious. I don't want you touching these. At all."

"There was no damage to you," Bruce said with disbelief as he stared at a bank of monitors. "The output from the Power Stone was enormous and... and you're fine."

Strange shrugged. "Like I said, I'm used to using one."

"Time, not Power! That one practically burned a hole through Thor's head!" Bruce gestured at where Strange sat on the edge of the exam bed. Bruce was a massive green wall of muscle, and yet he had to gesture with his left arm instead of his ruined right. Strange, meanwhile, was a comparative sliver of a man, tall but slender, and yet he was the one who'd somehow shrugged this energy off. "And you're not him."

Ignoring him, Strange mused, "I'm going to try to teleport them out." Tony turned to Bruce, and both men exchanged a look of mingled horror and frustration. By the time they turned back, the Space Stone had uselessly flashed a half-dozen times and Strange looked increasingly annoyed at his apparent failure. "Well. Fine. Apparently, I really can't get these things off me."

"Oh my God," Tony sighed, then raked his hands through his hair. "Well, at least you're stopping _after_ nearly exploding yourself." So much for their easy plans for tidying up after the big fight. He'd have to tell Pepper that this would take longer than expected. "Bruce, could you call the van people and let them know there's no point in stopping by yet? Hank might be on that call, so better you make it than me. And fill them in on all of... this."

Once they were alone, Tony rubbed tight circles into his temples and sighed. "Seriously, Doc. I mean... thanks, but why'd you pull that move? We had a plan."

"Do you really want to know?"

"Uh, obviously."

Strange shrugged, and slouched more comfortably on the edge of the medical bed. His impossible gauntlet-hand went seemingly ignored. "I'm currently projecting myself forward through time to assess potential plans of attack against Thanos. The two of us are still on Titan, Thanos hasn't arrived, and I need to find the best way to deal with him."

Tony's eyebrows rose.

"I'm serious. Once I find a workable scenario, I'll let these loops cease, return to Titan, and let the real timeline play out while I put that victory plan into effect."

"The 'real timeline,'" Tony echoed, and gestured around Bruce's home. Its walls were a pleasant array of soft blues and creams. Songbirds swept past the windows, which looked out on a bright, cloudless sky that hung over a celebrating world. They'd won, and a confused but delighted planet was undeniable in its joy. "I hate to tell you, but we're in the real timeline."

Strange waved him off. "Only from your limited perspective. I've already seen an incredible number of iterations. All of them thought they were real, too."

"An incredible number," Tony repeated. Randomly skipping between visions like that sounded absurd, but even a small number of Time-fueled hallucinations could leave someone dizzy and delusional. "Well, no wonder you pulled that dumbass move. You've probably fried a few circuits."

"I don't want to let go of this one just yet," Strange said, sounding rather like he was trying to reassure Tony. "I've never tried using a full gauntlet myself, before. I want to push this as far as I can before I try adjusting the parameters. Your 'real timeline' isn't going away any time soon."

"Gosh, thanks," Tony drawled, and looked him over. Just as before, there were no obvious side-effects beyond singed clothing... except for that place on his arm where flesh merged smoothly into machine. "Well, if you think that you're only visiting here, I guess that explains why you're not very bothered by your arm turning into nanotech."

"Right," Strange breezily agreed. "I've experienced a lot worse. For a while, I thought there had to be a way to win the fight on Titan. Since I'm here, there obviously wasn't, but I kept trying new angles for a long, long time."

"And?" Tony obligingly prompted. 

"In retrospect, this isn't a surprise, but the Reality Stone can literally turn people inside out. Do I smell pizza?"

"I'm not even going to comment on those two lines being back-to-back, but yeah, here're some leftovers." A quick bit of work combined the remaining slices into one box, which Tony handed over. As Strange considered his options and retrieved a slice of sausage and olive, Tony leaned back against a bank of cabinets to study the unbelievably bewildering man in front of him. "So. I guess I should ask: how do you feel?"

Apparently, altering the course of the entire universe really worked up an appetite, as Strange ate through a full slice before bothering to respond. Seeing his own nanotech gauntlet and its full Infinity complement being used to casually hold a slice of pizza made Tony blink hard. His life would have been _so_ much more sensible if he'd never met this man. Finally, Strange answered, "I feel completely fine. And no, I have zero idea how that's possible."

At least they were both in the same boat, then. It was actually rather satisfying for this man who acted like he knew everything to be left in the dark, too. "Did the Stones burn out after Bruce, maybe? Are they safe for people to use if they've already...?" Tony gestured up and down his right arm, mimicking the damage Bruce had suffered.

Strange hesitated. His curious complacency grew opaque, and his good humor flickered. "No, they're still dangerous afterward."

Unfortunate, but unsurprising. "Hmm. Did anyone else try using them? Maybe we can figure out why you slipped through the cracks like they didn't."

Again, Strange hesitated. It truly was odd to see him without complete self-assurance. From the little time they'd spent together, that was the look Tony was most familiar with on him. "Yes, others used it when we just couldn't get it across the finish line to Lang's van. It was always fatal."

"So, we _did_ try to move it across the field?" Tony paused as the obvious dawned on him. "Wait, why didn't you just do that with a portal?"

"Because the portal sparks alert the enemies on the other side, and whoever comes out of the portal is targeted by dozens of weapons before they have a chance to put up their own defenses." Strange cut off Tony's instinctive protest about how his suit reacted far faster than human thought and could have beaten them to the punch. "Don't argue. Four hundred and nineteen attempts say you're wrong."

Four hundred and nineteen. Right. Sure. "This is insane," Tony whispered to himself, but another, growing part of him wanted to hop onto this ride and see where it took him. "Okay. So, what're the win conditions up until this point? What're you trying to improve on?"

As Strange inhaled and began a typically long-winded, self-important explanation, Tony realized he'd gotten more than he'd bargained for. Soon, though, Tony forgot to care.

That battle on Titan had been one of the most difficult and hard-won of Tony's long heroic career. They'd come so close to victory but barely escaped deaths more permanent than a five-year dusting. Even with the emotional insulation of years, Tony could recall the sharp, sudden terror of the moment when Peter Quill had ruined their plans and woken Thanos from the sleep they'd so carefully trapped him in.

But apparently, that was all on purpose, as Strange had wanted it all to happen. "You don't remember me telling you that I'd seen these visions to put together our fight plan," Strange mused as he pointed that out. "That suggests that I don't go back to the past in this specific timeline to move forward with it, but just let its possibility collapse. It's not going to end up as the final version."

"Excuse me?" This had been alluded to before, and by now, Tony wanted an explanation. "Strange—"

"Stephen."

"Excuse me?" Tony dryly repeated.

"In a lot of these visions, we got used to using each other's first names, Tony." He hit the choice hard. "Would you mind? By now, it feels more natural."

"I... fine." With effort, Tony reined in his impatience and tried again. "Stephen. Possibility, collapse: explain."

"It's like I said: the two of us are alive on Titan. What we see around us in this room is like a daydream. It feels real when you're in it, but ultimately, the real world moves on and certain events actually happen. Don't worry," Strange—Stephen—said before Tony could cut in, and held up his nanotech hand to forestall the interruption. "Everything up until the fight at Avengers headquarters is a sure thing. Your marriage, your family, all of that does happen in these interim years. I know you've been worried about that before."

Annoyed, Tony blew out a short puff of air. Yes, that had been what he was about to comment upon, and it was annoying that Stephen knew that. "Whatever. I still don't believe you." Completely, anyway. "But keep telling me how we got here."

Their battle on Titan had been choreographed by Stephen more than Tony realized, and that choreography hadn't been to steer them toward what was apparently an impossible win. Instead, Stephen had used a bit of Time energy to keep track of a precise clock, then ran out that clock using the good-faith fight attempts everyone else had thought they were making. There was no way not to lose in the first matchup against Thanos, but if they lost inside of a very precise span of time, there was a sliver of a second chance.

"You mean when Lang was inside the Quantum Realm," Tony realized. "Everything had to be timed around that event."

"I wish," Stephen groaned. "In comparison, that'd be easy. It took a lot of trial-and-error to get right. A _lot_ of trial-and-error." As he continued, Tony realized that yes, it had been even worse to plan for. After Thanos left them on Titan, he'd gone to Earth to complete his Infinity set with the Mind Stone. That had involved another few minutes of fighting, and then the dustings weren't immediate, and so the proper timing for Thanos departing Titan had to involve both cushions. 

As Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose, he tried to envision a fraction of those planning attempts and gave up almost immediately. This was already giving him a headache. "So, Thanos had to leave Titan inside a span of... one specific minute or so? How long did you have with Lang inside of the Realm to play around with?"

Stephen laughed bitterly. "Again, I wish. In comparison, it was easy to trap Lang. But getting him out?"

Tony gestured him on.

From the long, slow way Stephen exhaled, this had been one his hardest-won pieces of knowledge. "Eight seconds. The actual target was an eight-second span. During that eight seconds, the Park family was making a left-hand turn onto Mission Street in San Francisco. Allen Park was in the passenger seat, trying to fix a problem with his iPhone as his wife drove."

Simultaneously fascinated and confused by this meaningless minutia, Tony listened.

"As the car set into motion around the turn," Stephen sighed, "she turned into dust. So did another driver. The two vehicles struck each other, killing the Parks' two children as well as two adults in the other car." His dull, resigned voice painted a horrific picture. Tony could see Allen's disbelief as his wife vanished, followed by the sharp pain of impact. He'd probably woken up in a hospital, and been told that yes, his wife was truly gone... and now, so were his children.

In Tony's mind, Pepper vanished next to him, and he woke up to hear that Morgan had died, too. That grief was almost incomprehensible, and it took him a moment to move past that and understand the implications of what he'd just heard. "Four people," Tony slowly realized. "You asked about." His voice caught, and he coughed to get it back under control. "You asked about Natasha, and said five was as low as it could go."

Stephen studied him for a long, quiet beat, and nodded. "Right. It looked like it might be six, but with how this latest try turned out, me using the gauntlet apparently brings it down to only five lives sacrificed to save the universe."

Tony took a step forward and shook his head, confused. "But you didn't know that. When you woke up, you couldn't figure out why you were still alive. You were convinced that it'd kill you. It'd still be six. So why did you...?"

"I'm a doctor. Do no harm." Stephen shrugged, but his easy confidence fell away as soon as he'd said the words. "Or at least... as little harm as possible. I've kept trying to find a timeline that saves everyone, but I really don't think it's out there."

Natasha had died to unlock the Soul Stone, and made it possible to bring back half the lives in the universe. These Stones played by archaic, unshakeable rules. Tony supposed that it made sense that such a demand could never be circumvented... and increasingly, he believed that Stephen really, truly had tried all of these different options. But those people in San Francisco hadn't unlocked any Infinity Stones. "So, why did it need to be the specific eight seconds that killed those four people?"

Stephen took a while to reply. Deep grief filled his eyes by the time he did, and so Tony had a chance to realize that 'do no harm' wasn't simply a slogan, but something that might as well be tattooed onto the man's soul. And then he'd broken that vow. On purpose. "Without his family, Allen Park fell into a deep depression. His friends spent years pulling him back from the edge. They found him a new job, away from old neighborhoods he wanted to avoid. But even as his life seemed to go back to normal, motivation was hard. He'd forget to do his timesheets, sometimes, or would leave part of his lunch somewhere. The latter attracted rats."

That last sentence was apparently supposed to seem more meaningful than it was. Tony waited, then eventually prompted, "And rats are important?"

"Very important. After about eighteen months, one of those rats his lunches attracted finally walked across a piece of equipment and ejected Lang from the Quantum Realm."

Tony paused again. "Excuse me?"

"Four people had to die," Stephen said, sounding exhausted, "to lure a rat to a van."

"You handed over the Time Stone to Thanos knowing you were counting on a _rat?!"_ Tony sputtered.

"It got there," Stephen sighed. "Eventually. _Eventually."_

"No, seriously, you killed those people for a rat?!" As soon as the words were out of Tony's mouth, he regretted them. They'd landed like a knife through Stephen's heart, earning a visible flinch, and Tony knew why. "You didn't kill them," Tony quietly corrected a moment later. "They just... had to die."

"That's what I keep telling myself," Stephen murmured. His earlier casual slouch now seemed exhausted, and barely able to keep himself upright.

Natasha just had to die. Or Clint, maybe, but one of them wasn't coming back from that world. Tony knew that. He did. And that wasn't the fault of a man who'd genuinely thought he was sacrificing himself when he put on that gauntlet, even if he'd somehow lucked out during this attempt. "So," Tony began once their mutual pain had ebbed. "Who was number six, before?"

Stephen shrugged. "Lots of people tried. And so, there are lots of names."

"Like who?"

Hesitating, Stephen looked away for a long moment, and eventually shook his head. His expression was grave when he turned back. "Peter, for one. Someone tried to grab it away from him, so he stuck his arm inside before they could."

Imagining that energy ripping through the boy like it'd done to Bruce, Tony paled. "And he..."

"He's strong, but he's not as strong as Banner," Stephen quietly replied. "Every circuit in that suit of his shorted out. It caught on fire. And then... he caught—"

"Stop," Tony ordered, gasping. He could picture the thin nanoshell that made up the now-outdated Iron Spider outfit, and all the damage it'd taken on Titan. Of course it wasn't up to this task. God, the fact that his own tech hadn't held up when Peter needed it the most. "Just stop. And I don't want to hear about anyone else."

Stephen studied him with a heavy, shadowed expression, and nodded once. "Good. I'd rather not tell it. Anyway, it kept not working out right at the very end. People either couldn't handle the energy to use it properly, or they weren't motivated enough to do so at the best time. I figured I fit both categories like no one else did."

And he'd thought that doing so would kill him, but he'd still done so after seeing Peter die to it. Almost despite himself, Tony felt his opinion of Stephen Strange turn markedly toward the positive. "Were you the first person it actually worked for?"

Stephen cleared his throat. "I mean, I've seen a possible workable alternative, but this?" The words came out dismissive; that must have been a messy 'win.' He lifted his gauntlet-hand and wiggled the fingers. "Much better outcome. I'll keep iterating off of this new path, now."

"I'm glad you tried it, I guess." At what point, Tony wondered, had he begun to accept that this whole ridiculous mess was the truth? "So, how many tries are you up to?"

"This is number fourteen million, six hundred and five."

Tony choked on his own saliva, and coughed hard.

Stephen smirked. Confidence re-entered his gaze and his shoulders squared where he sat. "And this is why I was able to use the gauntlet so well: I have a _lot_ of practice at manipulating the Time Stone."

"Fourteen million, six hundred and... how many tries are you going to put yourself through?"

Stephen shrugged. "As long as it takes to find the right one. I'll stop when I know I've found our best chance, and not a second before then."

"Jesus." Tony hopped up onto a row of cabinets. As he sat on the counter's edge, he and Stephen studied each other across the small room. He still didn't _like_ the man, but he'd spent five years resenting him for what seemed like an unnecessary handover of the Time Stone and all the pain that followed. No conversation could totally overcome all of that inertia, but what he'd heard had shoved aside a lot of it. "Well, we'd better figure out how to get those Stones out of you. We owe them back to their home timelines."

"Right. Are you sticking around here?"

"I guess," Tony yawned, exhausted as the last forty-eight hours fully sank in. "Bruce has a big house. And we can always order more pizza."

"Sounds good. I'll go find somewhere to sleep. I'm tired, too."

"Stephen," Tony called when the other man was nearly out the door, and waited for him to turn. "Wait a second. If you did all of those Titan timing runs for handing over the Stone, and then came back only for the big fight... when did we get used to using each other's first name?"

With his gauntlet-hand resting casually on the doorframe, Stephen studied Tony. His easy gaze shadowed again, but instead of pain or unease, it was filled with what Tony could only call a soft, thoughtful warmth. It was like he knew some nostalgic secret that no one else had heard. "The original plan wasn't to just hand it over. We tried a lot of other things, first."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. You'll have to fill me in. Could be interesting."

Stephen laughed faintly and broke their gaze. Even so, Tony could see more emotion in his eyes than he'd usually seen from the man, though he couldn't yet put a firm name to it. "Long stories, and not worth telling, trust me. I suppose the only interesting thing about them is that they inspired me to put this on." His hand lifted off the doorframe, and its fingers wiggled faintly. Six Stones glittered in sunlight that slanted in low and long to fill the room.

"Fine. Anyway, I guess you can pick somewhere first for sleeping." Tony smirked. "Call it 'I thought I was sacrificing myself to save the universe' privilege. That's not something that many people get to claim, so I might as well let you have this one."

Stephen hesitated a second. "Not many people, no. Anyway. We'll figure this out."

At this point, Tony concluded, he did actually trust all of that nonsense about fourteen million alternate paths. It was almost offensive to imagine that the world he saw wasn't a sure thing, and it put way too much faith on one Dr. Stephen Strange... and yet, Tony couldn't help but believe him. Something in his voice was far more open and exposed than when they'd spoken before. Not only did 'another timeline' provide an explanation for that, but something about his new tone felt trustworthy. Honest. It was almost caring, as silly as the word seemed when applied to the good doctor.

"Wonder why I used his name," Tony chuckled, and set off in search of his own place to crash. It wasn't like they were close. Despite how Stephen had tried to brush off those questions, it must have been quite a story.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a discomfiting feeling to know that all six Infinity Stones were stuck inside one's hand.

"And I guess you _are_ my hand, now," Stephen mused as he lifted the gauntlet above him to study it, inside a guest room in a far corner of Banner's home. When he examined this bizarre new shift to his body, he'd wanted as much privacy as possible.

As he'd told Tony, it wasn't unsettling to have his body changed, for he had indeed experienced odder things than a mechanical arm. But this particular sight broke precedent. After all the time and time and time and time he'd spent tweaking precedent toward a more perfect future, he was left unsure how to react to seeing six Infinity Stones staring back at him. 

After he'd used them. 

Without dying.

No one could safely hold all of the Infinity Stones. He'd watched them burn down Peter, Wong, Drax, Mantis, and a second Hulk attempt that pushed his battered body past its limits. He'd also seen it rip through others that Stephen didn't personally know: van Dyne, Lang, Rogers, and Rhodes had all similarly overloaded. Danvers and Thor had come close, even though it was killing them, but they needed too long to gain control of the gauntlet. Thanos had been able to close in before they managed to do so.

The only person it had worked for was the man wrapped in a 2023 nanotech suit that was just as sturdy and high-tech as this 2023 nanotech gauntlet. It was like Tony's entire Iron Man suit had served as a stabilizer for the gauntlet, and that bit of help made it fast enough to do what had to be done. 

What had to be done.

What _had_ to be done.

But Stephen couldn't let things stand with what he'd seen at the end of #14,000,604. So, he'd tried one more time. He'd thrown the ultimate Hail Mary, knowing this would kill him but also knowing that using it right away would leave Thanos stranded well across the field of battle. With so much expertise in Infinity Stones, he'd hoped that he'd be able to gain control of the gauntlet before Thanos could close the long distance between them.

He had. And then... he'd wound up with _this._ "I cannot even comprehend how my nerves are functioning right now," Stephen muttered as he carefully and deliberately moved each gauntlet-finger. The red surface around each Stone was scorch-marked in spots, glossy where it wasn't, and unmistakably the creation of Tony Stark. If not for how Stephen would almost certainly be abandoning this timeline in short order, he'd be horrified at having what looked like one of the Iron Man gloves as his new forearm.

Right. The glove wasn't his priority: the Stones were. Apparently, this new, better path led to the unfortunate replacement of his arm, but it still demanded returning all of these Stones to their home timelines. The Hulk apparently hadn't been able to pry them out. The Power Stone hadn't forced them out, nor had the Space Stone teleported them. The answer must lie somewhere else.

"Instead of the Stones themselves," Stephen mused, "maybe I work on the settings around them?" 

Closing his eyes, he focused again on his hand. He still couldn't feel any nerves inside the limb, but when he focused like this, he noticed something else: six points of energy danced in his awareness like they were caught at the edge of peripheral vision. When he acknowledged them, they moved toward the center and gleamed like technicolor stars. "Fall out of the glove," Stephen murmured, and tried to loosen the settings of the gauntlet through sheer willpower, like letting the muscles in his hand fall slack. "Let go."

Nearly a minute passed, and the Stones did not fall out. 

Oh, whatever. Fine. He'd sleep, Stephen decided. That might be all that was needed to let the Stones come loose. And if sleeping didn't do it, he was in a house full of labs with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, and was a short skip across the Hudson River from the New York Sanctum. The answer would obviously lie in one of those places.

Exhaling, Stephen closed his eyes again, and tried to ignore the six points of color dancing behind his eyelids.

Those six points of color were still embedded in his vision and in his hand when he woke up. It'd probably been too much to hope for, but damn, this was annoying. "What's for breakfast?" he wondered as he wandered through the house and tracked down the kitchen. Banner's home had the feel of an old, genteel estate that had fallen on hard times and then been adequately remodeled to modern standards. It wouldn't win any architectural awards, but it was comfortable enough.

"Toast?" Banner prompted, and reached for two more slices of bread to pop them into the toaster.

"I thought about picking up breakfast sandwiches or something," Tony said, pouring himself a mug of coffee. "But it turns out that reversing the apocalypse left things a little busy around town. I'm amazed I scored that pizza, yesterday."

Stephen smiled and took a seat on a stool along the breakfast bar. Yes, he supposed things would be busy. Since he'd left right after his first successful attempt, he hadn't gotten to experience the world celebrating over the return of half of everyone. "Toast is fine. Thanks."

"Do you still feel all right?" Banner wondered, and gestured toward Stephen's right hand. "Considering..."

"I feel fine," Stephen said with a shrug, and looked toward the coffee machine. He should have poured a cup before sitting down. "I still couldn't get them out, though. I'm hoping you'll have some ideas, today. And—"

A mug of coffee appeared in front of him, and Stephen jolted and pushed back from it. It was the same style of cup as what Tony had used, and smelled like an unremarkable French blend, exactly like what filled Banner's coffee machine. In other words, it was exactly the mug of coffee he _would_ have poured for himself.

Tony and Banner jolted, too, and eyed the mug. "Where'd that come from?" Tony demanded.

Realizing the truth, Stephen exhaled, closed his eyes, and focused on the dancing red spot in his vision. When he opened his eyes again, the mug of coffee was gone. "Sorry. Reality Stone."

"Sorry, Reality Stone," Tony repeated with disbelief.

"I was just thinking about how I wanted coffee, and—" Stephen gestured toward the coffee machine, then exhaled in annoyance as the mug _popped_ back into existence in front of him. "Okay, again, that was unintentional." With determination, he focused on the troublesome mug, and nodded when it made its second exit.

"Hey, ah, is there any way to not do that?" Banner asked with a broad, nervous smile. "It's probably best if you avoid using the Stones at all until we can get them out of you."

"Why do you sound worried?" Stephen wondered with a smirk, and this time, did actually stand to pour himself a real mug of real coffee. "I'm dedicated to the metaphysical protection of Earth. That's not going to stop just because I'm temporarily omnipotent."

"Great, he said the O word," Tony muttered.

Laughing, Stephen finished pouring his coffee and returned to the barstool. "If I were going to misuse these, I had all last night to do so. It's fine." Though the Stones' energy somehow didn't damage him as it coursed through his body, he was aware that it still flooded him. Each blink that had six points of color behind his eyelids reminded him that those united Stones temporarily controlled the universe... and so did he. "Seriously, don't worry," he insisted as Tony and Banner exchanged an unsettled look. "Do no harm, remember?"

Again, Tony and Banner shot wobbly smiles at each other.

"Should we get right to work on getting these out of me?" Stephen suggested, amused when both men nodded a little too emphatically. "Because trust me: I _do_ want them out."

But on the way to the medical lab, an impish impulse took him over. Letting Banner's large form precede them, Stephen hung back even with Tony, then extended his left hand.

Tony looked down at it, then glared.

"You want it?" Stephen laughed, and gestured toward Tony with the delicious-looking breakfast sandwich he'd willed into existence. The biscuit was warm and flaky, the egg perfectly seasoned, and the bacon crisp: the platonic ideal of an unhealthy, delicious breakfast.

"Stop using them!" Tony demanded.

Stephen lifted the sandwich a bit higher, so Tony could smell the bacon in all its glory, and waited.

With a sigh, Tony snatched the sandwich from his hand, took a bite, and gestured him onward. A look of reluctant awe suggested that the sandwich tasted exactly as good as Stephen had intended.

Inside that lab, a full day of tests passed, and the Stones were still locked inside Stephen's hand. "All right," Stephen muttered. "This is now legitimately annoying."

From the looks Tony and Banner gave him, they'd label the situation as far past 'annoying.' While Tony came up with test after test to run on Stephen, Banner had occasionally vanished into back rooms. Thanks to Mind allowing thoughts to float inadvertently in, Stephen knew that Bruce had called the rest of the Avengers to fill them in on what was happening, and to try to calm down their mounting unease as the day ticked by.

To be fair, Stephen admitted, if there were someone else wielding total control in the palm of their hand, he'd be a little antsy about it, too. "I appreciate the effort you both made," Stephen said when the sun again slanted in low through a window, "but I should probably make use of the Sanctum's library tomorrow, instead. And Wong probably wants a crack at this thing." The fingertips on his left hand rebounded off an unscorched spot on the gauntlet. A metallic _thud_ accompanied the motion.

Tony sighed and nodded, but added, "Can we come by in the morning?"

"Sure. Any help is welcomed. Because I _do_ want these out," Stephen reminded them, and began to reach for his sling ring before remembering that, at least for tonight, a faster method existed. As the Space Stone flashed, he had just enough time to see Tony's frustrated glower before teleporting to Greenwich Village.

"Stephen," Wong said in surprise, and placed a bookmark between two open pages. He was in a seldom-used study in a far corner of the Sanctum, and had pulled a book that Stephen didn't recognize. It must not have been opened for years. "Banner contacted me with the basics, but didn't say you were coming tonight."

"I gave up on their labs after today. We weren't seeing any progress. Let's focus on what avenues we might have here, instead."

Wong nodded. "You know, when you contacted me to help arrange of all of those portals, you could have mentioned that it was just a distraction for you planning to..." Trailing off, he gestured at the gauntlet.

"Oh, right, I didn't explain what's really happening," Stephen remembered, snapping his fingers. Wong jolted in open fear, and Stephen's expression flattened with annoyance. "Do you mind? I am obviously not doing anything else with these things. That was a 'I remembered something' snap, not a 'rewrite the fabric of all existence' snap."

"Right," Wong said uneasily. 

It was unsurprising that Banner or (this) Tony trusted Stephen so little, but he really thought Wong would give him more benefit of the doubt. "Anyway," Stephen pointedly continued, "I'm actually projecting myself forward in time from five years back, to find the best alternative for saving the universe. This timeline is just a trial run to see if me using the gauntlet would work. I assumed it wouldn't, which is why I didn't bother explaining to you that I was about to use it."

Wong stared at him for a long second, then shrugged. "That does make sense, then." Coming back to the Sanctum was definitely the right move. Wong was much better at rolling with metaphysical punches. "How many of those tries do you remember?" Wong wondered as they exited the small study. "What are the best options so far?"

"This is the best option, without question," Stephen immediately said. "There's only been one other potential hit, and it's... it's not acceptable."

"What's unacceptable?" Wong mused. "We might be able to fix whatever's wrong, there. It can't be worse than you ending up with the Infinity Stones stuck in your hand."

"It's not acceptable," Stephen snapped.

Wong blinked back at him, and then slowly nodded. "All right, then. But really, how much do you remember? How many timelines have you tried?"

"I'm past fourteen million." Wong eyed Stephen sidelong, but said nothing. "A lot of them were obviously wrong, and I just remember them in a clinical sense. Like notes I'd studied for an exam."

"And the others?"

Stephen said nothing for a few steps, as they rounded a corner toward a larger library. "There were some paths that seemed quite promising. I spent a lot of time pursuing some very slight variations on a theme."

"Like?"

Stephen shrugged. "Figuring out who all to invite for those portals, for one, and getting down the timing for the fight that lost the Time Stone." He trailed off there, aware that his expression prompted further inquiry but unable to reel it in. 

Wong, of course, didn't take the hint that Stephen's downcast expression offered. "And?"

"I spent a rather long time seeing if it was possible to run before Thanos ever got the Time Stone."

"Obviously not," Wong grimly concluded as they reached the library and he began pulling more books. "And if he was able to collect the others, then I suppose there wasn't any use in trying to come back here for help. No one could stand up to that. I don't envy you remembering what it was like to have those five Stones coming at you without backup."

"Without backup," Stephen murmured in feigned agreement, and paid too much attention to the pages in front of him.

As he'd told Wong, there were many timelines he'd summarized into a few useful details and then emotionally discarded. Millions of possibilities were simple memory nodes inside his mind, useful only for knowledge like "Thanos will swing left, _then_ right." Only three main paths had seemed promising enough to invest himself in: winning the fight at Avengers headquarters, getting down the timing of when Thanos would leave Titan... and that long, long time he'd spent before resigning himself to losing the Time Stone.

When he'd spent so much time filled with hope of escape, he hadn't been alone. But Wong didn't need to know that. No one did, really. Those timelines were irrelevant, abandoned on the ash heaps of failed possibility. The only thing those failed timelines had done was to convince him to try using the gauntlet himself. That was their only significance. At all.

_I sure am trying hard to convince myself of that,_ Stephen thought dryly, and forced back all the emotions that wanted to bubble forth. 

He probably shouldn't have mentioned to Tony that they'd gotten used to using each other's first names.

Oh well. This try would be over, soon enough, and he could keep trying to refine it. He made sure never to get overly attached to any particular timeline. Soon, attempt fourteen million, six hundred and five would conclude, and he'd move on to fourteen million, six hundred and six. There would be no need to talk about any abandoned timelines, and everything would work out.

Everything would work out, Stephen insisted to himself, and tried to focus on the book in front of him. Each time he blinked, six points of light danced in the darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

"You brought more people," Stephen said bluntly the next morning, when he opened the door to the Sanctum and saw a crowd waiting there. Though he'd been expecting only Tony and Banner, a half-dozen more stood behind them. "Well, come in, I suppose."

Music still filled the streets of Greenwich Village. Stereos poured through open windows and street musicians commanded audiences at seemingly every intersection. Everyone was playing their own song, nothing blended with each other, and it was quite frankly cacophonous. Stephen gladly used the Sanctum's magical insulation to cut off the noise as soon as doors closed behind their new arrivals. The world celebrating the end of the apocalypse, it turned out, could be slightly annoying.

"So, what's this place?" wondered James Rhodes as he studied the ceiling overhead. He and Rogers must be representing the military, and were doing a terrible job of looking like they weren't worried about the threat that Stephen admittedly presented.

Stephen gestured them toward a lounge. "One of the three ancient epicenters of Earth's magical protection. There are ones located in New York, London, and Hong Kong."

"New York," echoed Scott Lang. (Stephen did feel bad about stranding him in the Realm to miss half a decade of his daughter's life.) "That counts as 'ancient?' Because I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack when I was under house arrest, and they sure did mention the seventeen hundreds a lot."

"Ancient mystical orders have weird histories," Stephen said with a shrug, and held open a door. He'd never fully understood the history of New York's Sanctum, either, but everyone at Kamar Taj was convinced that it was old. Beyond the door was a comfortable, spacious room with seating around a coffee table, and near every chair waited a drink. "You can all find your appropriate seat, I'm sure." 

With a befuddled look, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne found a pair of chairs framed by a black coffee with sugar (for him) and tea with milk (for her). Hope van Dyne looked equally unsettled by the latte waiting for her, and Lang sighed dramatically as he retrieved an electric blue cocktail that looked better suited for a cheap tiki bar. "Can we not use the spooky glove to figure out what my favorite drink is, please?"

"Yeah," Banner cut in with a serious tone. "Avoid using the gauntlet, Doctor. Please."

"That was actually the Sanctum," Stephen promised them, settling into a chair next to a cup of chamomile. "This room is designed to welcome incoming guests. Supposedly, it puts you at ease. Although, from the looks of all of you, I don't think that worked very well."

Rogers and Rhodes exchanged a significant look, and both men exhaled. When they turned back, their gazes were level and certain, but tension tugged at their expressions no matter how they tried to hide it.

Stephen sipped his tea and waited for what was coming. While he did, he became aware of Tony studying him, and ignored it.

"What you did," Rhodes eventually said, "was incredibly heroic. You saved... everything, Doctor, and thought you were sacrificing yourself to do so."

"True." Stephen sipped his tea again.

"But now," Rogers delicately continued, "the fact that you are... fine, somehow, and are still wearing the gauntlet with all of the Infinity Stones still in it..."

"You're worried that I'm going to rewrite reality again," Stephen finished for him, and gestured to Tony and Banner. "We've already had this discussion. Don't worry, I won't."

The group paused, shared a wobbly smile, and looked back to Stephen. This time, perhaps because of their discussion the day before, Tony took over with more confidence than anyone else had shown. "We all talked, and we want to cut off your gauntlet."

"Cut it off?" Stephen echoed with a frown, and looked with consideration at his right elbow.

"It's already a fake arm, right?" Tony continued. "Look, I'll make you a new one that is _just_ an arm. And once we've got that thing off you, we'll definitely be able to break the whole thing down in our labs and get the Stones out." He hooked his thumb toward Lang's group. "These guys have all worked with nanotechnology and weird, weird energy. Between them, me, and Bruce, we'll get it done. One hundred percent."

"That does make some sense," Stephen admitted. "Yeah, fine, let's just cut the damn thing off. Captain Rogers, did you come to do the honors with that shield of yours?"

Rogers chuckled, and exchanged another glance with Rhodes. "No, I'll leave that to the experts. Rhodey and I were just here to communicate that... ah..."

"There's a vested national and global security interest in getting that gauntlet off you," Rhodes finished. "And by now, governments like Steve again. So the two of us got sent to talk you down, if that needed to happen. I'm glad it didn't."

Yes, Stephen did suppose that he was a clear and present danger to all existence so long as his hand was fire-engine red. "Fair enough. Let's finish our drinks, first, and then we'll go and cut this off. Banner, are we using your labs again?"

Janet van Dyne set down her tea. "Actually, Doctor, with those portals of yours to get us there, I thought we might use Hank's labs. During my years in the Quantum Realm, I was affected by all kinds of unknown energy. Hank's built a place specifically aimed at xenoanalysis."

"Sounds like a plan," Stephen agreed, only to notice Tony studying him again. He turned to meet that gaze more directly, then cleared his throat.

"She said _portal,"_ Tony pointed out. "Not _teleport."_

"I heard her," Stephen said with a calm, broad smile that was precisely designed to annoy Tony. It appeared to work.

Ten minutes later, the group was in a sleek, modern lab near San Francisco, courtesy of Stephen's portal (and not the Space Stone). "Don't worry," he promised everyone as he hopped up onto an exam bed, and showed off the sling ring that was already in place on his left fingers. "I'll be ready to take us back home with my other hand. I assume someone has a plan to stitch up the bleeding stump of my right elbow after you get this thing off me, by the way?"

Rhodes blinked. "You are incredibly laid-back about an amputation, Doc."

Stephen shrugged and laid back against the bed. He'd lost limbs a million times during these future visions, and most of those had been while he was wide awake. No, he wasn't upset by the idea of having this gaudy red glove painlessly removed from him. "I do expected to be sedated, mind. I'm assuming you have that capability here. Otherwise, we all need to talk again."

"We do," Hank Pym said shortly, and looked to everyone else for confirmation that he should move forward with the next step. Getting it, he nodded and disappeared into a back room while his wife used an alcohol swab to clear a spot on Stephen's arm.

Distracted by that, Stephen didn't noticed Tony walking up to his bedside until he was standing over him. "Seriously," Tony murmured. "Are you cool with this?" Concern flickered through his eyes, but unlike everyone else in the room, it wasn't for the gauntlet and what Stephen might be able to do with it. Tony's worry was reserved exclusively for the man who'd already experienced ten million different shades of hell.

Stephen's gaze moved down to the arm he couldn't feel, and then back up to Tony's face. In his mind, scorch marks spread across Tony's skin. "If I only lose my arm, it's a very good trade," Stephen whispered back, and blinked hard to remove that remembered damage to Tony. "This'll be the right path, and I'll call it a success. I am going to hold you accountable on that 'new arm' promise, though."

Tony smirked. "You've got it. We can talk about any upgrades you want on it, too. We can go the full James Bond. Laser weapons hidden inside your fingers, that sort of thing."

Stephen chuckled, then blinked as he felt the slight prick of a needle entering his skin. It wasn't yet full anesthesia, but would relax him into the process. Considering that they didn't know how his system would react, it was a wise move to do this in stages. Comforted by the knowledge that Dr. Banner was there to steer everyone else's decisions, Stephen relaxed into gradual, drug-induced oblivion. Six points of light danced behind his eyelids again, but as he descended into the deep, pre-surgical anesthesia void, even they faded into nothing.

He woke in what felt like minutes. "So?" Stephen asked with a bleary smile, and raised his right arm—his right stump—to inspect how cleanly they'd amputated the gauntlet.

But his arm was not a stump, and the gauntlet was still there. In it, the six Infinity Stones still glittered as Stephen studied them with confusion. After those few blank seconds when nothing made sense, Stephen looked around for an explanation.

"It wouldn't come off," Banner said simply when Stephen found and held his gaze.

"What do you mean, 'it wouldn't come off?'" Stephen demanded. With anesthesia still lingering, the words were slow and clumsy, and his mouth had to work too hard to form them. Annoying. His hand clenched and Reality flared. Between one word and the next, that remaining anesthesia burnt away. His next words were more precise. "What amputation procedure did you use? I don't see a single mark anywhere on me."

"We tried a lot of different things," Banner promised. "Each one was like trying to cut a diamond with a stick of butter. It didn't matter whether we tried to cut the gauntlet or you. Nothing worked."

"Hand me a scalpel," Stephen muttered, and sat up. "We could experiment with local anesthesia instead of general. I may have to be awake to focus on letting you through, and..." Though everyone grimaced as he brought the scalpel to his own skin, the blood they anticipated never spilled. Stephen drew the scalpel deeply, but it went _through_ his skin in a way he'd never anticipated, like it was encountering fog, and was shiny and unbloodied when it emerged from the far end of the movement. In the gauntlet, Reality glimmered red.

Stephen studied the scalpel blankly. Then he tried again, and focused his mind on rejecting any attempt from the Reality Stone to protect himself from damage. This time, the blade rebounded off his skin like it was rubber encountering titanium. As it did, Power flashed in the gauntlet.

"Please," Banner piped up, "try not to use the—"

"It obviously wasn't on purpose," Stephen snapped. "Either time. Is that what happened while I was out?"

Hank Pym studied him with shadowed eyes. "Space flashed and our amputation tools vanished. Time flashed and new tools froze in place. Reality? It did all sorts of bullshit. Scalpels flopped around like cooked pasta, or your skin went weird like you just saw..."

Janet van Dyne cut in, "We were keeping an eye on your vitals during all of that, and you were still completely anesthetized. We're not sure what caused the reaction."

Rhodes took a step forward, swallowing. His gaze danced around the room, wanting to study Stephen but too wary to do so openly, like he was worried about activating some threat. "Do you have any other ideas, Doctor?"

"Yeah, let me try a few things," Stephen muttered and raised his left arm. A portal appeared, and he obligingly leaned his gauntlet-hand through it and then gestured for the portal to close. It spun ever-tighter around his elbow. When it collapsed all the way, his gauntlet would be guillotined to land in the safety of the New York Sanctum.

Or that was the plan, at least, before his portal collapsed into nothing despite his best efforts to maintain it. Glowering, Stephen gestured again with his sling ring, but the next portal wilted as abruptly as the first one had. "All right," he muttered. "I know you all don't want me to, but I'm using the damn thing."

With the Reality Stone, Stephen pictured the impossible sight of his gauntlet-arm detaching itself from its elbow to land on the floor. He could see and hear what it would be like when the gauntlet simply _fell off_ him, and how it would rebound slightly off the slick tiles of Pym's lab. The tough metal of Tony's nanotech would clatter when it hit. He could picture each moment, each angle, and hear each sound, and so he could force it to happen.

The Reality Stone flickered red, and he felt an odd bit of tension inside his elbow, but the stone's light died before anything actually happened. Fine. Reality plus Power would do the trick. 

It didn't, though.

"Doctor?" Rogers asked. By now, most of them looked openly nervous.

"Everyone but Tony, get out," Stephen demanded. At the groups' newly wary looks, he sighed and explained, "I need to brainstorm and he's the one of you I know the best. We've planned against one enemy together, before, and so we can plan against this one. And I don't work well in a crowd."

"It'll be fine, guys," Tony promised everyone. "Just give us a minute."

Once alone, Stephen leaned forward and splayed his hand to best show off the colors it held. "Okay. We've gotta think this through: what combination can we use to get this off?"

Tony exhaled, but thankfully, didn't try to restrain Stephen from what was now an unfortunately obvious requirement to use the Stones themselves to fix this problem. "Maybe it's like trying to tickle yourself: it doesn't do any good, because you know what's coming. Can you use Mind to block your brain? Could you cut it off, then?"

"It's worth a try," Stephen murmured, and did activate Mind's golden glow before he tried slicing his arm off with another useless portal, and then tried to drop it loose with Reality, and tried teleporting the gauntlet away with Space. "I'll try adding in Soul as another blocker," he suggested after all those efforts failed.

"And try Power and Space together," Tony prompted, leaning in close. 

Using Power to amp up Space's teleportation was a good thought, but it was as useless as all the others. Even the tugging inside Stephen's elbow had ceased. There was no longer even the slightest sensation of anything coming loose, and so as far as he could tell, all of this had actually set them back from his first attempts. "There's one more thing I might be able to do," Stephen eventually concluded.

"Whatever it is, you'd better do it," Tony sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "I don't know how long those other timelines can work without these Stones."

"It'd take years before they'd fully wither. We lucked out there, at least."

Tony puffed his cheeks full of air, then exhaled loudly. "Well, that's good. Unfortunately, we do not have wiggle room with 'years' of you being perceived as the biggest threat to global security. So I am extremely on board with whatever the plan—"

Stephen lifted his hand and snapped its fingers. His heartbeat echoed in his ears, each slow beat like the pounding of some great war drum. Pure, blinding white filled the room. Until it faded, Stephen felt as if he were floating outside of his body, outside of time, outside of everything. 

"Except that!" Tony sputtered once the world returned.

Now, Stephen's dismay was total. Once again, he'd used all six Infinity Stones. With them, one could overwrite all existence. Their power was absolute, their lifespans eternal, and before this five-year conflict, never before had they been united. They'd wiped out half of existence, brought them back from the collective grave, and stopped a madman's army before the slaughter could resume.

And yet, the Stones _couldn't get rid of a single fucking arm._

"It really won't come off," Stephen blankly said, studying the glossy red surface of the glove. Its scorch marks were gone, but it was still the same gaudy construction as ever. Apparently, not even infinite power could keep him from being stuck with this ugly thing. At the very least, couldn't he have a normal-looking arm, again?

A moment passed, power rippled, and Stephen sighed with relief. A normal-looking arm, at least, was apparently doable. His limb looked like a perfectly typical human arm after Reality rippled through him, and though he could sense the Stones still embedded in what had again become flesh, they were invisible to any outside observer. "Just the visuals," he told Tony when he realized the other man thought he'd actually fixed it. "But it's a start, at least."

"Damn." Tony rubbed a hand across his face again, exhaled, and looked up. "Hey. Make a fake gauntlet."

Stephen blinked. "Why?"

"You just snapped again and I bet they noticed. They're going to lose their shit unless things are _solved_ after you pulled that move." Stephen still hesitated, and so Tony quickly added, "I'm the one who figured out time travel, so I can claim the right to 'take the Stones back home' with my own tech. That means we get breathing room. We just need a cover story until I can actually figure this out."

"Until _you_ can figure this out?"

"Do you want my help or not, Strange?"

Stephen hesitated, reluctant to admit that Tony's technical genius might find a way to succeed where his mystical genius had failed, but then gestured toward a nearby counter. On it, a gauntlet rippled into existence, capped off with a clean cut through intricate nanotech that looked like one of his portal guillotine attempts had finally succeeded. Fake Stones glimmered into place in the fake gauntlet's settings, next, and the entire thing now looked wholly believable. He hoped.

"We've got it!" Tony announced and opened the doors that had apparently locked themselves after the Snap, Round Two. Everyone else piled through, shooting wary and accusing stares at Stephen, but Tony waved the fake gauntlet firmly enough to hold their attention. "I need to go break this down, all right? And then I will run them back to their home universes, and so we all can stop worrying about random Infinity Stones roaming around here."

Rhodes barely acknowledged his friend, and instead shot a mistrustful glare toward Stephen. "Did you just—" He lifted his hand and snapped its fingers.

"Everything short of that didn't work," Stephen sighed, and held up what looked to be a perfectly normal arm with a perfectly normal lack of Infinity Stones embedded into it. "I'm just glad I apparently thought to replace it after it dropped off."

Lang wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

Rogers turned to Tony and sighed. "Well, that's good, I suppose. Tony, you're sure you can get those Stones out?"

"Completely. And I'm going to go do that _right_ now," Tony promised.

Banner piped up, "Need any help with that?"

"Nah, you work with Hank to make sure the time travel juice is all stocked up and ready to go, and that the van's equipment is still good. That'll be the choke point, not these." Tony lifted his gauntlet and wiggled it at them. 'Stephen's fingers' flopped uselessly about as he did. "Unless you all _want_ a bunch of extra Infinity Stones hanging around here a while longer..."

"It sounds like he has a plan," Rhodes said with relief, and turned back to Stephen. "Sorry, Doctor. I know you wouldn't have done that unless you had to. We're just a little jumpy, understandably."

"I do understand," Stephen said solemnly, with what anyone who knew him would label wildly uncharacteristic courtesy. "Well, if you all don't mind, I'd like to finally take a bit of alone time to process the fact that I've been dead for five years."

"It is pretty weird, yeah," admitted Hope van Dyne, and chuckled. Her parents echoed the sound.

No one protested when Stephen opened a portal for himself to the Sanctum, and he stepped into blessed silence as the circle shut behind him. "Right," he said shakily, and ran his left hand across his right. Skin glided across skin, and seemingly nothing else.

He and Tony had successfully taken the pressure off. So far as the world knew, everything about the Infinity Stones had been resolved. Now, their only deadline was making sure that the Stones were actually returned to those other timelines before they began to wither and rot, but that was a far more forgiving deadline. They both could breathe, and so they both could plan, and in secrecy they would be able to _actually_ fix this.

If only Stephen weren't still seeing six points of light every time he closed his eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Holiday nonsense is my main excuse. 
> 
> Time for things to begin to spiral.

"You're sure you don't want any help?" asked Steve Rogers as he reviewed the readouts for the quantum travel device. It'd been extracted from Scott Lang's van and now had a comfortably large platform on which to prepare for missions. Only one person stood on it, though.

In a garish quantum suit, Tony grinned at Rogers, then extended his helmet into place. "This is _high-tech_ travel. You'd just slow me down, Jimmy Stewart."

A small group had gathered to watch the departure. At its back, Stephen exhaled, closed his eyes, and focused on the points of energy he could feel embedded into his hand. With the Stones active, he could analyze the world around him more acutely than with simple human senses, and affect it more deeply than with any magic. It was a brief activation, though; too quick to come up on any scanners.

Tony carried a briefcase that was supposedly filled with Stones being returned to other realities. They'd been perfect duplicates to the Avengers' eyes, but now, hidden inside their shielded case, the fakes' structures began to break down. Tony would be able to crush them into unidentifiable nothing before he returned, to sell the lie that he'd left the real Stone in each respective timeline.

Stephen opened his eyes. The long blink should be unnoticeable to anyone, like he'd just been wondering whether he was about to sneeze. Besides, all of their attention was held by the man about to travel backward through time. Putting on an expression of only vague interest, he let his hand fall slack again.

The quantum portal opened, and Tony vanished. "Everything's looking good," Banner confirmed a few seconds later. "I think we've just about got this wrapped up."

"Fantastic," Stephen said. "Then if you all don't mind, I have half a decade of reading to catch up on."

"Enjoy your books," Banner chuckled. "And Doc... if you ever need help with something, call us. We all owe you one."

"A big one," Rogers confirmed.

"I will keep that in mind," Stephen said, then used a sling ring to open a portal. Only when it closed, and he'd counted down a few more seconds after that, did he breathe a sigh of relief. Okay. That was one challenge down, as everyone's attention was off him and his deceptively normal-looking arm. Once Tony returned from his supposed Stone-replacement tour, the two of them would have all the time they needed to solve this problem, and then get the actual Stones back to their actual homes.

Tony knew that generous timeline, too, which explained his insistence on spending a few days with his family after his return. Stephen welcomed the space. In the silence, he was able to calm himself, practice ignoring the incredible energy he felt within him, and learn more about this world's situation. Potential timeline #14,000,605 appeared to be a very promising one, and he wanted to see its full context.

Gas stations were working hard to keep up with sudden spikes in demand, but despite long lines, things seemed manageable. Countless automobiles were now permanently off the road, years after their owners had gone missing and they'd rusted through disuse. Unfortunately, food supplies didn't have a similar safety net. Everyone still needed food and no one could have possibly prepared for a sudden doubling in how much had to be on the shelves. Tony had joked that they'd been lucky to get pizza on that first day. He was sadly and completely right.

There was one tiny bit of luck, though, and that was that this all had come early enough in the growing season to sow more seeds. Much of the returned livestock was being slaughtered, and fishing boats now sped to waters that were apparently stunningly crystalline. It'd be tight, but food supplies should pull through. Probably. Hopefully. 

Housing was also a nightmare, for people had moved in to empty homes only for them to suddenly regain their old owners. It was fortunate that Banner had picked a truly abandoned fixer-upper, or some elderly couple could have been hovering over their shoulders while they tried to figure out who these strange men were and why one of them had a glove for an arm. There'd been reports of people being shot for 'trespassing' on both sides of the equation. Shelters were already full. 

Basically, it was all a mess, and no one had come up with any magic bullet solution. If there was one. There probably wasn't.

As Stephen sighed at another bleak television report about yet another piece of bad news, Wong glanced up from his readings. "These problems exist because the whole world does, again. It's a good trade to make."

"I suppose it is," Stephen admitted, but sighed again as the news cut to a story about farmers working eighteen-hour days to sow enough seeds so that the world — hopefully — wouldn't starve. 

Thankfully, it was soon time to stop watching the news and get back to work. Stark Industries had facilities all around the world, and many of them were as advanced as the former Avengers headquarters. Tony could provide any lab, and Stephen could provide instant transport, and so they chose the one best suited for medical analysis: a spot near Atlanta, Georgia, just a few blocks away from the Centers for Disease Control. "I didn't realize you contracted with them," Stephen said dubiously as his portal snapped shut inside an empty room.

"We contract with basically everyone," Tony automatically replied, only to stop after a few steps, frown, and turn. "Wait. Why did you make that sound like a bad thing?"

"I'm picturing the Ultron debacle, but with bacteria."

"The Ultron debacle?" Tony echoed. "One: something can't be labeled as a 'debacle' if it's wholly halted and all parties receive due compensation. The Department of Damage Control and our favorite senators got that language codified. Two: how would you even know about it?"

"Besides the fact that it was the top story on every news channel? As we all waited to see if humanity would go extinct?"

"Yeah. Besides that." 

"You told me about it."

Tony typed in access codes, but didn't bother looking down as he did. Instead, he frowned at Stephen in thought. Under his fingers, consoles flashed to life with each precise keystroke. "When?"

"It was about the four million range, give or take a hundred thousand tries."

With an expression caught halfway between dismayed and disbelieving, Tony shook his head and said nothing. Around them, holographic monitors descended from the ceiling and emerged from the walls. Permanent screens also turned on to display a security profile card for Tony, along with various authorization levels that he held. Along the bottom of each screen blinked a warning: _please identify guest._

Tony's fingers moved again, and that message vanished. A few more taps also removed his profile picture. "I think it's for the best if neither of us was here today, and if no logs are recorded," he wryly explained. "Just in case someone in IT notices some really weird power signatures coming from your arm."

"Right. I definitely haven't even been to Atlanta since a medical conference five years ago. I very, very definitely wasn't here today," Stephen agreed with a smirk, but paused before he sank into an exam chair. "Wait. Ten years ago. I'm still getting used to all of this."

"The man who lived through fourteen million what-ifs has to 'get used' to something," Tony chuckled, and steered him the rest of the way into the chair. It also hummed to life, and a prickling field of energy ran along Stephen's skin, making fine hairs stand up as it passed. 

That field stayed in place for nearly a minute as Tony fiddled with various dials. Eventually, Stephen couldn't bear waiting any longer on the non-doctor to figure out how to measure him. "Let me see the screens."

"Do you know what settings to adjust?" Tony asked pointedly, and gestured to his proprietary hardware.

"Do you know exactly what the human nervous system should look like?"

A long pause passed. "Fine. We'll work together," Tony compromised, and did give Stephen access to some controls. The hardware was unfortunately trickier to adjust than Stephen had hoped, and it took him a good minute to zero in on the tests he wanted. By the time Stephen felt in control of his medical readings, Tony's silence broke again. "How does it feel? Having all of them... in you?"

"I'm trying not to think about them."

"Yeah, uh, that's not an answer."

No, it wasn't. Stephen needed a moment to offer one. "It's overwhelming. I have no idea how this happened. I have no idea how I'm not dead. And yet, every minute, I can feel them inside of my skin, so it obviously _has_ happened." Sighing, he looked around the slick, modern laboratory. Through its window, he could see warm sunshine and green leaves rustling in the wind. It made for a beautiful contrast, one that he shouldn't be alive to see. "It's like worrying at a missing filling. I can make myself stop, only to realize that my attention's come right back. And so," Stephen concluded, "I am trying my absolute hardest not to think about them."

Tony nodded solemnly, and for a while, fiddled again with the controls on his end. "You're not planning to make any more breakfast sandwiches, right?"

"Absolutely not. Like I said, I'm trying not to think about them, and that means I do not want to use them, ever again. I just want to get them out." 

The reassurance visibly relieved Tony, and with a smile and nod, his work sped. He asked his next question without looking up from the controls. "When did we talk about Ultron? It doesn't seem like we had much time for a sit-down gab session."

"Sure we did. It just involved running, instead of fighting on Titan."

"We managed to run from Thanos?" Tony clarified, intrigued. "Wait, who got included in 'we?'"

"Every combination you could think of. Yes," Stephen added with a smirk, "including Quill."

"Damn," Tony laughed. "I think I could manage being on the run with everyone else. Wait, strike Drax, too."

"You've got that right. In the times we left Quill but took Drax, the guy said we were 'without honor' and challenged us both." Anticipating the question, Stephen answered, "He obviously couldn't beat the two of us, but he distracted us enough to let Thanos catch up."

Tony snorted. "Figures. I bet it worked better if we just left behind all of those losers." When Stephen didn't reply, Tony looked up and took in his visible reluctance to answer. "Well, now you've got me all curious. How did some of the situations play out? No harm, no foul for how anything went down," he added when Stephen still stayed quiet. "I know it was your job to try out everything."

"And I did try everything," Stephen murmured in quiet agreement. This wasn't a kind of memory he liked to linger on, and he'd already seen that name-dropping a particular someone could get Tony to cut off awkward conversations. "Well. We had the best luck when it was just you, me, and Peter stealing Quill's ship and taking off with it."

That earned a grin. Tony's fingertaps became more dramatic, like a concert pianist striking the keys. "Yeah, I knew we'd do better without them. I bet they were pissed."

"I imagine they were _dead,"_ Stephen corrected as he recalled their betrayed, dismayed faces vanishing from the sensor readouts.

That ruined the concert piano performance. Tony didn't exactly argue with him, but he did shrug and say, "Hey, those timelines aren't really real. Nothing but right now counts. I can laugh at leaving them behind."

_Nothing but right now counts._ It was a solid mantra to cling to as Stephen confronted the memories of millions of ways to sacrifice people. "There's really not much to laugh at, I'm afraid. We had the best luck, comparatively speaking, but it still wasn't good luck. When the three of us ran, Peter always died first. Sometimes by seconds, sometimes by longer."

Indeed, Tony stopped laughing. His agile expressions became solemn and weighty, and stubborn disbelief filled his eyes. He didn't want to hear this, and yet knew he'd asked, and couldn't go back on his own words that 'nothing but right now counted.'

"The timing depended on which course we set," Stephen grimly continued. "Heading back to Earth was a fast, sure death sentence for everyone. I quickly learned to suggest anywhere else."

Tony's hands migrated away from the consoles. After moving into a few awkward, aborted positions, he folded his arms across his chest. "How long did we stretch it out? Before you finally gave up on running?"

Damn. Tony was supposed to have taken the image of a dead Peter Parker as a clue to stop asking for more information. "When the three of us left Titan like that, the longest it ever took before Peter died was four years, one month, and two days."

"Four..." Tony's mouth worked soundlessly, and he blinked and tried again. "And we never went back to Earth? I stole the kid from his field trip, and then he was on the run _in space_ for _four years_ before he _died?"_ At Stephen's silent nod, Tony exhaled and looked a few shades paler than he had a moment earlier. 

Eventually, Stephen asked, "Any luck with the settings? Here, in try number 14,000,605?"

"Where Peter's still alive," Tony dryly agreed. Stephen supposed the attempt to redirect Tony's attention had been rather blatant, but did get his fingers back on the console. "Yeah, we're getting closer. Let me—"

An alarm sounded, and both men looked up. "Shit," Tony murmured as harsh red light filled the room with periodic flashes of hell. "That's a CDC evac alert."

Stephen stepped toward him. "What in the hell does that mean?"

"It means you should portal us back to Manhattan while—"

"No. What problem are they reporting?" Tony gestured insistently northward, but Stephen just spoke louder. "For all we know, some terrorists came back to life and are planning to take advantage of the whole world being distracted." Over Tony's urgent noises, Stephen added, "The CDC holds strains of Ebola, Hantavirus, Mycobacterium ulcerans... countless diseases that would be absolutely terrible for someone to get his hands on. The two of us could handle an assault better than anyone Atlanta has on call, so, again: what problem are they reporting?"

Tony hesitated another moment, like he wouldn't have before he had a child waiting for him at home. But it passed, Iron Man replaced the fatherly look in his eyes, and he nodded and stepped back to the console. "I'll check their system, give me a second. There's... shit. It's not that easy. There's no terrorist for us to fight."

"What is it, then?" Stephen demanded, and walked up next to him. 

Oh, hell. He should have anticipated this.

The Centers for Disease Control had kept operating during the five-year stretch, functioning as best it could with a reduced staff and research team. That research team had kept diligently trying to find cures to some of the worst diseases on Earth, in their isolation labs with cultivated petri dishes of deadly viruses and bacteria.

Viruses weren't a problem, for they weren't alive; Thanos didn't target them, and neither did Banner's reversal. Bacteria, however, _were_ alive. When Banner snapped half of all life back into existence, the CDC's careful bacterial experiments abruptly doubled in size, in a adaptive, toxic mixture of cells that now spanned thousands of generations. As a delighted but bewildered world struggled to adjust to its reset, exponential bacterial growth went unnoticed. And now, according to the alert screaming at them, some absolutely terrible anthrax adaptation was about to explode out of containment and hit the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.

"So, what do we do?" Tony grimly asked.

Stephen said nothing as he stared at the console. Epidemiological scenarios filled his mind. Inhaled anthrax had a fatality rate well over fifty percent, even with world-class treatment. Symptoms could show up the next day, a week later, or two months after exposure. Depending on how out-of-control this event became, Atlanta could be looking at worse than a Thanos-level tragedy that took months to play out.

He couldn't let that happen.

And there was only one way to stop it.

Wordlessly, Stephen held up his right hand and let its illusion drop. Tony inhaled sharply as the Infinity Stones rippled into view, dark and quiet on Stephen's trembling fingers. Sparks of green and purple light soon flickered, and Tony's jaw set with grim acceptance as Time and Power fully activated. He didn't look remotely happy, but he didn't argue.

By now, Time energy came to Stephen as naturally as breathing, and with as little thought. Supplementing the Time Stone with the Power Stone let him become aware not only of the flow of time immediately around him, but in every speck of matter for miles. He could sense each bacterium as it cycled through its rapid lifespan, splitting and evolving and multiplying as it sought human hosts to thrive within.

And then, he turned those rapid lifespans back. Two bacteria collapsed into the single bacterium that had spawned them, and so on until the petri dishes held only what they were supposed to. Then, just to be safe, he turned it back a bit more. "There," Stephen exhaled, opened his eyes, and lowered his hand. The room seemed enormously empty and cold around them as the red light continued to flash its warning. 

But then, the light stopped.

Tony turned back to the monitor, studied it, and breathed a long sigh of relief at whatever he saw. "Alarm canceled. Everything's okay. The CDC's called off their alert. It's... they... you said you weren't going to use them again." They both knew the protest was pointless. He, apparently, still felt compelled to make it.

Stephen spread his hands and shrugged. He could still feel flickers of Infinity energy running through him without the burning, searing damage that should follow. "It's not like I made another breakfast sandwich. I stopped an actual catastrophe. Millions could have died."

The protest faded and Tony waved him weakly off. "Yeah, yeah. I know. You did the right thing." He exhaled dramatically again. "So. People are going to ask: what's the story, since that definitely wasn't just fixed with Infinity Stones? Since there _are_ no Infinity Stones 'round these parts?"

Stephen shrugged again. "I'm a doctor who can do magic."

Tony waited for more of an answer. When none came, his eyebrows crept up his forehead. "That's it? That's the whole explanation that we give?"

Stephen gestured at the window, only to realize the Stones were still visible. With a quick flash of Reality energy, his hand returned to normal. "What doctor out there knows enough about magic to question me? What sorcerer knows enough about medicine?"

"Ugh. Good point, I guess," Tony muttered. "And I guess it's a good thing that we were here."

"It's definitely good. If this had been a worst-case scenario, millions _would_ have died." Now that the crisis had passed, Stephen managed to briefly laugh, and returned to his seat on the edge of the exam bed as adrenaline's energy waned. "Note to self: for my real timeline, on the very first day that I get back, remind the CDC to check their BSL-4 lab cultures."

Tony appeared to be losing his panic-stance, too, and reached blindly behind him for the nearest chair. He chuckled once he'd sunk onto it. "So, this is what it's been like? Thinking that you've finally found the perfect way, only for something else to nearly blow up in your face?"

"I wish I was this lucky," Stephen snorted. "In millions of timelines, some equivalent of that anthrax crisis _did_ happen. Horribly. An engine exploded, a head got removed, you name it. There was no 'nearly' about it."

"Well. Yikes." Another chuckle escaped Tony, and as he steered his attention toward the ceiling, it turned a little louder and slightly unhinged. "I don't think I'm a fan of these time loops."

Memories returned of those desperate flights from Titan, along with the tragic ends that had inevitably followed. "Neither am I." With effort, Stephen returned his focus to the here and now, and the Stones that had taken up seemingly permanent residence in his hand. He could still feel energy running between Time and Power like sunlight glinting off a cobweb; faint, but noticeable. "Let's run these scans ASAP, before someone calls us about what just happened. Since I just used them, we'll probably get interesting results."

"Yeah, sure thing." Tony pushed himself up. "While I scan you, tell me about how awesomely fast I was at figuring out Quill's spaceship."

Stephen couldn't help but smile. Tony could be irritating, but he played the jester like a weapon, and he'd known exactly how to diffuse some situations. Out there in the vast, heartless reaches of space, it'd been a valuable skill to keep them talking when they couldn't afford to go silent. "Of course. I'll tell you all about your staggering, unmatched genius."

"That... sounds like sarcasm."

"Run the scans, Tony."

"Fine. But I _am_ gonna drag some stories out of you about the timelines when we ran."

Stephen's smile didn't falter. _Fine. I still won't answer._


End file.
